Oru Baffroom N Howss Adbvwnetru Part 150

As you might have seen in the news, there’s been some nasty weather in my neck of the country over the past few days. It began on Friday night with what felt like some light rain that increased in heaviness as the night wore on. Somewhere in the wee hours of Saturday morning this turned into a thunderstorm, though the wife and I didn’t know it right away being as how we were asleep. Our first inkling that we were in a storm came when a bolt of lighting struck very close to our house, so close, in fact, that the very first thunderbolt we heard was of the deafening, pants-poopingly terrifying variety. I mean, imagine the two of us just snoozing away only to be awakened by what sounded like the end of the world. My wife later said that she thought a tree had hit the house, but noticed that nothing was shaking, whereas my first thought was “EARTHQUAKE!!!” before also realizing that nothing was shaking. Then the mighty burst began to recede and we could hear more thundery undertones to it (thundertones?) and our hearts began to beat once more.

Sadie dog was nowhere to be found in our bedroom, so we called to her and quickly she came dashing in from elsewhere in the house where she had, no doubt, been cowering in fear at what was probably her first major thunderclap like that. She climbed gratefully into bed with us and seemed pretty shaken, so we pet her and told her she was a good dog to calm her.

Of course, none of us were exactly sleepy after our scare, so we got up to make sure there were no flaming trees outside about to fall on the house and there were none.

The following morning, we decided to check the weather online and found that while the computer was fine, the Suddenlink cable modem, which also provides our telephone service, was completely off with no lights to be seen. A quick cell call to Suddenlink told us that they too could detect no signal from us and since telephone service is first priority with them they would send a tech out ASAP. We were told one should be in contact with us shortly. Great. There went my plans to go see Star Trek at a matinée.

With no internet or phones and with us being effectively trapped in the house, the wife and I began looking for projects. Oh, sure, we could fuss with the bathroom a little, but because our new over-the-sink light had not yet arrived, there wasn’t much we could do other than install some base-board we don’t have or put up the new bathroom door that we’ve been avoiding having to do, cause damn if we ever feel like doing the amount of precise measuring, drilling and chiseling that job will require. So the wife and I turned to the next major household project on our list, one which we’d planned to tackle immediately after the bathroom anyway—putting up some pegboard in the garage to hold all the new tools we’ve had to buy to put in this bathroom in the first place.

I’ve long wanted some pegboard in the garage, as the multiple plastic shelving units the house came with are full of tools and crap that take up valuable shelf-space that could be used to store other crap we’d rather not have in the house proper. My only problem is that I couldn’t decide the optimum location to put the pegboard. Nearly every wall had either plastic stack shelving or wooden bracket shelving in front of it or on it and there is a criminal lack of electrical outlets along the entire back wall. The wife, being a wise gal, suggested ditching all the shelving in one of the corners by the doors, mounting pegboard there and then combine the old bathroom vanity cabinet (which I’d been we’d saving for just such a use) and the old bathroom door (which I’d not considered using), to make a workbench. And almost without any hitches, this project worked like a dream. The old vanity, with the addition of some new 2x4 legs to increase its height, made for a perfect bench body and the old door made a great work surface, perfectly fitting into the space we wanted and made secure by the inclusion of some wooden supports on the unsupported end. With some prudent jigsawing, we also managed to fit in one of our old flat-pack bookshelves to hold power tools. Within mere hours we had a beautiful new workbench and pegboard area. I was frankly blown away by my wife’s genius idea and how simple it had been to turn one corner of the garage into a functional new area.

Then, as we were putting the finishing touches on the workbench and were rearranging the other garage crap (not to mention trying to find all the tools scattered throughout the house that now had a home on the pegboard), FedEx arrived with our new bathroom light. The wife wanted to install it immediately, but I talked her into waiting until after dinner, which we didn’t even get to until nearly 8 p.m. due to our finishing touches on the garage and the fact that at some point during the day one of the sensors on my remote controlled garage door opener stopped working meaning it would no longer raise and lower on command. We couldn’t find a break in the line or any evidence of a short, so we gave up for the day and left for supper. By then, I was pretty sure Suddenlink wasn’t going to show. And after we’d returned from dinner and set about installing the lamp, we quickly realized that it was a project that was not destined to go quite as smoothly.

(2BCONTINUED)